Janacek: Violin Sonata

The lives of the three Eastern European composers on this disc spanned almost 150 years (1854–1994), a period of dramatic historical change, political turmoil and radical developments in Western music.

Janácek, Lutoslawski and Szymanowski each left significant and very personal musical legacies, rich with inspiring melodies, harmonies and rhythms.

Praised by The Strad for the “striking athleticism, musical insight, expressive embellishment and elegiac lyricism” of her playing, Boston-born violinist Ariadne Daskalakis is sensitively accompanied by the equally renowned Russian-born Israeli pianist Miri Yampolsky, her frequent recital partner.

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra's leader Frank Almond steps forth with a robust recital recording of three 20th-century sonatas by composers primarily known for their mastery of the orchestra. These works by Strauss, Respighi and Janácek were all written within 30 years of each other, yet inhabit three distinct musical worlds.

Juilliard graduate Almond is one of the youngest prizewinners in the history of the Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy. Prior to moving to Milwaukee, he held positions as leader of the Rotterdam and London Philharmonic Orchestras. He was also a prizewinner at the Tchaikovsky Competition, as was his collaborator William Wolfram, who also picked up medals in both the William Kapell and the Naumberg International Piano Competitions.

Hagai Shaham and Arnon Erez have been enthusiastically acclaimed for their dazzling duo performances: their infectiously relaxed bravado and continual flexibility belying their impeccable ensemble. For their latest disc they turn to two composers who are seminal figures in the development of Eastern European music during the early twentieth century.

Dohnányi was one of the pivotal figures in Hungary’s musical life. He composed a number of significant pieces for the violin, including two violin concertos; his most important chamber work for violin and piano is the Violin Sonata in C sharp minor Op 21, composed in 1912. Dohnányi was by then thirty-five years of age, and the Sonata is a fully mature work showing his individual development of stylistic traits of Brahms and Liszt combined with a structural economy which reflects the close study of Brahms’s sonatas. Also recorded here is Dohnányi’s most overtly folk-influenced work, Ruralia hungarica, and a movement from his First Orchestral Suite, in F sharp minor Op 19, Romanza, arranged as a thoroughly idiomatic piece for violin and piano by Jascha Heifetz.

In the first days of World War I Dohnányi’s native Hungary was invaded by the Russian army, which seemed for a time to herald the end of Austrian dominance in the region. This portentous event provided the creative spark for Leoš Janácek’s Violin Sonata (his only surviving violin sonata; two very early ones he composed in Dresden and Vienna in 1880 are lost), at least according to Janácek himself. Other works by Janácek heard in this recital include early pieces from his student years, and an arrangement of the delicate mood study ‘A blown-away Leaf’ from the celebrated piano work On the Overgrown Path.

Following the highly acclaimed recording of J. B. Foerster’s violin concertos (BBC Symphony Orchestra / Jirí Belohlávek, Supraphon SU 3961-2), the violinist Ivan Ženatý – who has gained international renown as both a virtuoso and pedagogue – and the pianist Martin Kasík have chosen violin sonatas by three Czech composers from the turn of the 20th century. Nedbal’s and Novák’s not overly known and in stylistic terms distinctly romantic works contrast with Janácek’s sonata, an opus of the mature Master whose modernity places it firmly in the 20th century.

In Janácek’s third (yet only preserved) violin sonata there are distinctly “Russian” undertones, reflecting the period it began to originate: the outset of World War I. Novák’s romantically flamboyant sonata was written under Dvorák’s supervision and is clearly influenced by Chopin and Liszt; Novák’s Sturm und Drang is referred to on occasion. Oskar Nedbal’s early work bears witness to his mastery of both instruments and rich melodic invention.

The intensity of the listener’s experience is augmented by the technical bravura and musical maturity with which the two performers have undertaken this repertoire.

In the early years of the 20th century, whilst Arnold Schoenberg founded the Second Viennese School, a movement that would revolutionise a part of Western music, Bartók, Enesco, and Janácek affirmed their musical identities by exploring their countries’ histories and the roots of their respective origins.

Fifteen years before Bartók and Kodály began ‘harvesting’ folk music, Janácek was collecting thousands of Moravian folksongs in Hukvaldy, his native village, and the surrounding area. Bartók’s approach to folk music was a methodical one, and he and Kodály collected folk melodies as a team. As for Enesco, the title of his sonata, “In the character of Romanian folk music”, speaks for itself, whilst Janácek created a singular musical universe which does not belong to any particular school. The same cannot be said of Bartók, Szymanowski and Enesco, who were open to a wide variety of influences. For Szymanowski, the works of Austrian and German romanticists such as Chopin, Hindemith and Stravinsky provided inspiration, while Beethoven and Bach influenced Bartók. Enesco’s lyricism, on the other hand, can be traced back to Brahms, Richard Strauss and the vivid colours of French music.

David Grimal was born in 1973 in Paris and started to play the violin at the age of five. He won First Prize in violin and chamber music at the Paris Conservatory in 1993. Afterwards he did his postgraduate studies with Regis Pasquier, and later studied with Shlomo Mintz, and Isaac Stern. More recently he won the European Community and the European Radio Union Prizes in 1996, and received the Crédit National Fellowship Award. He was also honoured as the Classical discovery of the MIDEM 1997. He has performed as a soloist, amongst others with the English Chamber Orchestra, the Moscow Virtuosi, the Stockholm Chamber Orchestra, the Warsaw Symphony, the Bavarian Chamber Orchestra, I Musici di Padova, and the Paris Conservatory Orchestra.